


Patterns on Our Skin

by pyrrhical (anoyo)



Category: Eureka (TV)
Genre: Bad 304, Community: fandom5k, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Nebulous Canon Timeline, Really a Lot of Feelings Seriously, Relationship Negotiation, Soulmate AU, lots of feelings, never happened, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-18 04:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14845487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical
Summary: Allison catches sight of Jack's soul mark and tells Nathan about it. Nathan reacts predictably. He then plans out how he's going to confront Jack, but, let's be serious: how well do plans ever really go in Eureka?





	Patterns on Our Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tarlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/gifts).



> Dear Tarlan,
> 
> So, this is actually the second thing I wrote you. The first grew out of control and I was frightened I wouldn't finish it on time, so I wrote this. I love this canon, I love this pairing, and I love this trope. I hope you do, too!
> 
> This would not exist, at all, without Sky and Diana's constant cheerleading and amazing beta skills. Really: the degree to which this fic also belongs to them is incredible. (Sky literally went through and pointed out every place she thought I could make better. Even minutely. It was beta'ing above and beyond.) Another thank you goes out to spikedluv, who helped out with the final read-throughs and gave such wonderful commentary.
> 
> So, recip, I hope you enjoy it!

The first time he noticed, they were in a meeting with the various department heads at Global Dynamics. Allison had participated in the meeting, but whenever she hadn’t been speaking, she’d been staring at him with a puzzled expression.

The second time, they’d been trying to keep Eureka from exploding, and the staring had been a distracting annoyance, but not the top priority.

The third time, they were eating lunch, just the two of them, and Nathan finally said, “Allison. What’s going on?”

Allison tapped her fingers nervously on the table. She said, “Just--” before she took a deep breath. “Nathan, I know who your soulmate is.”

“What,” Nathan said, less question than statement of disbelief. It wasn’t that Allison was likely to be lying. No, it was the fact that she likely _wasn’t_ lying.

“Really,” Allison said. The guilty expression was still on her face, but she’d stopped tapping on the table and a smile was sneaking into the corner of her eye.

While they’d been married, Allison hadn’t been disappointed that they weren’t soulmates. Even with the digests and the registries, only about a third of soulmates wound up finding one another. Most people found happy, fulfilling relationships with people who weren’t matches, and the world kept on turning. Allison hadn’t even insisted on seeing Nathan’s soulmark before they were married. He’d seen hers accidentally around the time they first met; they’d have known then. 

Nathan had been the one who insisted she be allowed to see his, so that she knew for sure, and there were no misapprehensions. Nathan kept his mark covered any time he wasn’t in the shower, and so far as he knew, there had been no accidental viewings. His mark was on his back, near his left shoulder blade, so despite the patch he used, he still took care to wear clothing that wouldn’t reveal the area.

Allison was saying she had seen someone else’s soulmark, and that it had been identical to Nathan’s. Allison had a great memory, and she’d seen Nathan’s mark more than once. Still, it was a stretch. “Are you sure?” he asked. 

Allison straightened in her seat and gave Nathan her best why-must-you-disappoint-me-like-this look. “Yes,” she replied. “I’m sure. Your mark is very distinctive, Nathan.” 

Nathan’s mark was a series of completely discordant curves and lines, chaos as opposed to the elegance of most marks. “Fine,” Nathan said. He crossed his arms and tried to take a deep breath as subtly as possible. Allison didn’t react, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t noticed. “Who is it?”

“Well,” Allison started. Her eyes flickered up and to the side, like they always did when she was about to share something she knew wouldn’t go over well. Her gaze flickered again, this time to the space around them. They were in a secluded corner of Vincent’s, no one within at least ten feet. It was probably safe, but soulmarks were sacred. Maybe not in the religious sense, not to them, but still held at the highest regard.

“Just write it down,” Nathan said.

Allison pursed her lips, but nodded. She leaned over to pull a small flip-pad out of her bag, as well as a pen with the GD logo and phone number on it. Allison opened the pad at random, then flipped through the pages until she found a blank one. She wrote quickly, then turned the pad around.

In Allison’s straight, clinical handwriting, it read, “JACK CARTER.”

“This is a joke,” was Nathan’s immediate response. He sat back in his chair, straightening from the comfortable slouch he’d allowed himself to begin. His hands gripped the side of the table and he knew he was not looking at Allison kindly.

“Nathan,” Allison said, her tone both exasperated and firm. It wasn’t an unfamiliar way to hear his name.

He forced himself to relax and slid his hands flat on the table. “Allison,” he said, mimicking her tone. She gave him an unimpressed look, and he continued, “I’m not even attracted to men.”

Allison’s face grew even more unimpressed and she raised an eyebrow. “Really,” she said, no question in her voice.

Nathan grit his teeth. Sometimes he forgot just how long they’d known one another. “I _prefer_ women,” he said.

“Not the same thing,” Allison said, reaching forward to take the pad and flip it closed, dropping both it and the pen back into her bag. When she straightened back up, she looked more concerned than judgmental. “Nathan, he’s your _soulmate_.”

“We don’t even like each other,” Nathan argued. “He’s an idiot.”

Allison pursed her lips again. “You stopped thinking that years ago, Nathan. He’s just as smart as you are, just not in the same way, and you know it.”

Nathan frowned. “Fine. I don’t hate him.”

“Well, I suppose that’s a start,” Allison said. She gave Nathan a small smile. “You have a soulmate, Nathan.”

“We all have soulmates,” said Nathan.

“Sure, theoretically,” Allison agreed. Her smile had grown, self-satisfied as if she sensed Nathan’s capitulation, and she leaned back into her chair more comfortably. “Yours isn’t just a theory anymore.”

Nathan let out a breath and if a low noise went with it, it still hadn’t been a groan. His shoulders released their tension all at once and he slumped until his head was in his hands, elbows braced on the table. “Fine,” he said, muffled. “Fine.” 

“Good,” said Allison.

“I need to see it before I say anything,” Nathan said. “I have to be sure.”

Allison smiled. “How do you recommend we go about doing that?”

“Where did you see it?” he asked.

Allison paused for a moment, her expression considering. She kept smiling, but in Nathan’s experience, the angle of her mouth meant she was teasing him when she said, “My backyard. I asked him to help me hang a clothesline.” She shrugged. “He stretched, I saw it. No cameras to review.”

Nathan could feel himself scowling. “Registry?”

Allison laughed. “You hate the registry, Nathan. He doesn’t seem like the type of person who would use it, either. Married before, remember?”

“It’s a place to start,” Nathan said. “I have a meeting at three.”

“Two-thirty,” Allison returned, turning her arm to look at her watch. “It’s only one. That’s plenty of time.” She looked up at him. “Your office?”

Nathan nodded.

*

They had arrived separately, so they left separately. When Allison walked into Nathan’s office, he’d already pulled up all of the registries in the United States and written a small piece of code so that they could search them all at once.

“Efficient,” Allison commented.

“If he’s in there, he’ll have used his full name,” Nathan said. “Jack Carter is a common name.” He was glad he’d taken off his suit coat before he’d sat down: his neck was warm and uncomfortable just inside his collared shirt. Nathan tried to ignore the feeling. “Do you know his middle name?”

Allison raised her eyebrows. “No,” she said. “It’s probably in his GD clearance paperwork, though.”

Nathan did a quick search through the employee records and pulled up Carter’s file. “It just says Jack Carter,” Nathan said. “How did he get that through security?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Nathan. He was already a U.S. Marshal. They probably skipped some of the more basic things.” She paused. “Can you get into the Marshal database?”

“Of course,” Nathan said. He used the social security number Carter had provided to pull up more thorough records. Nathan’s clearance level was high enough that he had access to the files without the need for anything illegal. “John Michael Carter,” he read. “I think that might be worse.”

Allison laughed. “Too bad the registries don’t take social security numbers,” she said.

Nathan agreed with a hum and entered Carter’s full name into the registry search parameters. After a few seconds, two hits showed up on the screen. The first read J. Michael Carter, aged 45. “How old is Carter?” Nathan asked.

“Forty?” Allison guessed.

Nathan switched back to Carter’s personnel file and scanned for his birth date. “Thirty-nine,” Nathan said. “Close.”

“Do I win a prize?” Allison asked, smiling over at Nathan.

He directed his attention to the second entry, which read John M. Carter, aged 27. “Neither of these people are Carter.”

“Well,” Allison said, “they’re both Carter, just the wrong one.” Nathan caught her smiling out of the corner of his eye. She leaned over his shoulder, hand braced on the back of his chair, in order to look at the computer screen alongside him.

“Helpful,” Nathan said. He sat back in his chair, attention on the screen, but still aware of Allison in his space. It was comforting in a way he probably wouldn’t ever admit and it helped to lessen the tension in his shoulders and across his forehead that this entire situation had caused.

“All of Jack’s other paperwork says Jack. Just try that,” Allison said. “It can’t hurt.”

Nathan swiveled his chair back around, adjusted his search terms, and ran the code again. This time, fifteen entries showed up. He sighed, but scrolled through them, scanning the ages. Of the lot, one didn’t have a birthday listed, and another read “38.” He followed the link to the first, but went back when the picture was of an older gentleman with black hair and glasses. The second was the right age, but African American. Nathan turned his chair to face Allison. “Now what?” He propped an elbow on the armrest and put his chin in his hand.

“Asking him is still an option,” Allison said. The somewhat crooked smile she’d been wearing at Vincent’s was back on her face. She had stepped back when Nathan turned his chair and moved to lean a hip against his desk, causing him to swivel toward her. Her smile widened.

“It really isn’t,” Nathan argued. “Are you sure we don’t have it on camera anywhere? Carter’s been ill or undressed in this building more times than necessary.”

“All footage of anyone in a state of total undress is deleted unless necessary to an ongoing project or investigation,” Allison cited. “You know that.”

“And?” Nathan asked. 

“I can’t think of anything that would fall into those categories. Past investigations, sure, but that footage is deleted after ten days of the case closing.” She paused to think. “I don’t think Jack’s been naked in the building for anything investigative in the last ten days.”

“Oh, good,” Nathan said. “Extremely unhelpful, but good.”

Allison laughed. “You’re just going to have to get creative.”

“Does Carter know you saw his mark?” Nathan asked.

“Yes,” Allison said. “I told him as soon as I saw it, so he could cover it back up.”

“How did he react?”

“He looked down, said ‘oh,’ apologized, finished hanging the line, then rearranged his jeans and t-shirt after he stepped off the ladder.” She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, her face thoughtful, then met Nathan’s eyes. “He didn’t really seem bothered by it. He seemed more apologetic that I’d seen it than worried about his privacy.”

“So it was easily covered, but nowhere indecent?” Nathan asked. The custom to keep a mark covered, reserved just for “the one,” wasn’t the most logical, but it was as embedded in their culture as wearing pants in public. Jack leaving his uncovered when his clothing covered it up wasn’t unusual, but most people took care to add additional covering if there was a chance the mark might “slip out,” as it were. Researchers agreed that this cultural habit was a likely cause for such a small number of matches being discovered, but no matter how publicized that information was, the practice stood. 

“It was on his left hip, curved around the line of the bone. His jeans didn’t slip more than an inch or two.”

The idea was simple, inoffensive, and something Nathan wouldn’t have to step out of character to do. “How apologetic was he?” he asked, sitting up a bit straighter in his chair. He uncrossed his legs and had to concentrate on keeping them still.

“He might have thought I was offended,” Allison said. “I waved it off.”

“But it’s possible he still feels bad about it?”

“It’s possible,” Allison said.

“So if I told him it had made you feel awkward and offered to make him a patch, that wouldn’t be out of the blue?”

Allison raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms, frowning a little. “You wouldn’t technically be lying,” Allison said. “But it would be manipulative.”

Nathan shrugged. “No harm intended, and if you’re wrong, he’ll never know.”

“This one’s all on you, Nathan,” Allison said. “If you don’t want to simply ask him, I’m only here for moral support.” She smiled again, this one closer to the smile she gave DOD representatives she really wanted to go away. “Want me to ask Fargo to call him?”

“No,” Nathan said. He glanced at his clock. “Go be early to your meeting.”

Allison laughed. “All right, Nathan. Call me if you need me.”

Nathan waved a hand to shoo her out of the office, waited until he couldn’t hear her heels in the hallway anymore, then bellowed, “Fargo!”

After Fargo had been sent to call Carter and ask him to meet with Nathan at GD any time after six, Nathan had the computer lock his door and set his windows to privacy mode. Once any risk of being caught was gone, Nathan slouched down into his computer chair, pushed away from his desk, and put his hands over his face. Into the empty space, he muttered, muffled through his hands, “What the _fuck_?”

*

It was more than an hour before Fargo brought Carter’s reply, and Nathan was finalizing the materials he needed for his board meeting. 

“Fargo?” he asked, watching Fargo half-enter and half-exit the room at least a dozen times. 

Finally stepping fully into the room, Fargo clasped and unclasped his hands a few times, then said, “Sheriff Carter said that he would try to be here before 8.”

Nathan slowly raised his eyebrows. “I’m assuming there’s more to this story.”

“Nothing that can’t be handled!” Fargo half-yelled, putting his hands out in front of himself in a “stop” motion. “In fact, I’m going to go, uh, handle it. Right now.” Fargo didn’t wait for a response before he dashed out of the room.

Scooping up his materials, Nathan said, “I don’t want to know.”

*

Nathan had just started reading an employee request for materials that wasn’t due for an answer for at least a week -- his actual work had been completed hours ago, around when Jack had said he would arrived -- when there was a knock on his door. He took a moment to decide whether or not to be annoyed, and then called, “Come in.”

Carter walked into the room with an apologetic smile on his face. His jacket was slung over his arm, and his uniform shirt was unbuttoned at the top. There was some sort of grey powder all over him, though he looked as though he’d tried to clean it off. “Hey,” Carter said, dropping his jacket over a chair on the opposite side of Nathan’s desk. He looked at the chair for a moment, obviously considering whether or not he should sit down, before he shoved his hands into his pockets and dropped the tension in his shoulders. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.” Carter shrugged, and some of the grey powder shimmered on its way to the floor. “Thought I’d check anyway.”

“I see that,” Nathan said. He bit back any commentary on Carter’s need to narrate his decision-making process.

“Sorry about that,” Carter said. His smile dropped the apology but stuck around, though smaller and tired-looking. “Fargo said you needed me for something?”

“Allison told me about last weekend,” Nathan said.

“Last weekend?” Carter asked. He furrowed his brow for a moment before his eyes widened and he pulled his hands out of his pockets only to move them to his hips. “Oh,” he said, wincing. “That really bothered her, huh?” His left hand tightened its grip for a moment before he shrugged. “Should I apologize again?”

Nathan said, “That’s up to you,” and paused a moment before he continued. “She only mentioned it to me because it had been bothering her. I don’t think it upset her, honestly. More of a shock than anything else.”

“Oh,” Carter said again. “Huh. Yeah, I can see that.” He nodded to himself. “Do you need anything else?” He gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s getting late.”

“Carter,” Nathan said, forgoing the title. “I didn’t ask you to see me just to tell you that.” He frowned. “Why would I need to do that in person?” Before Carter could respond, Nathan put himself back on topic. The goal of this was not to piss Carter off. Whether or not it would be a byproduct was mostly out of his control. “I called you here to remedy the situation.”

“Remedy?” Carter asked. He’d opened his mouth to say something else, but switched it mid-word, so his voice was breathier than usual. Carter frowned, then asked, “How?” His stance didn’t change, but Nathan could see tension gather in his shoulders, as though if he needed, he already had the momentum going to get the hell out of Dodge. More than that, his eyes were narrowed, showing the nice set of lines dug into his forehead.

Nathan didn’t blame him. This was all coming across as much shadier than he’d intended. “A patch, Carter,” he said. “I have the materials to make you a semi-permanent patch, like most of Eureka uses.”

“That’s awfully nice of you,” Carter said. He still looked and sounded suspicious, but some of the gathered tension left his body. He was suspicious, but not defensive.

“It really is,” Nathan agreed. “Do you want one or not?” Carter always made the same face when confronted with an ultimatum: both exasperated and resigned. Nathan smiled and leaned back in his chair, sprawling a little. He had always found that particular face of Carter’s entertaining.

“Yes,” Carter answered easily. “It’s never really been an issue, but I probably should have gotten one before now.”

“Agreed,” Nathan said. He stood up from behind his desk and walked over to the small briefcase he’d set against the wall. He glanced up and down Carter, raising his brow at the grey powder. “The area needs to be clean before the patch is applied. I have an alcohol pad, but I don’t know if it will stand up against whatever it is you have all over you.”

Carter looked down at himself quickly. He made a face when he saw the powder, as if he’d managed to forget about it for a few minutes. “Yeah,” Carter said. He twisted to look at his hip, where his uniform shirt was still tucked into his pants. “It should be fine. There were about four layers between it and the kitten.”

“Kitten?” Nathan asked. He winced; the word had come out before he’d had a chance to think about it. He held up a hand, palm forward, and waved it a couple times. “No, nevermind, forget I asked.”

“I’ll just forward you the report,” Carter said. His smile was crooked, but amused, with laugh lines spreading from the edges of his eyes. He watched as Nathan opened the case and took out the materials onto the surface of his desk.

“This won’t work if I can’t see it,” Nathan said after a moment of staring hadn’t made Carter budge.

“Crap,” Carter said. He started unbuttoning his shirt. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.” He pulled the tails out from his pants and slipped out of the shirt. He made a face when he looked at it. He glanced at Nathan’s floor, then back to the shirt. Carter smoothed hands over his undershirt, still staring at the dust on the floor, almost as though he needed to touch it to make sure it hadn’t gotten filthy, too.

“That’s what the housekeeping staff is for,” Nathan said. 

“Yeah, all right,” Carter agreed. He dropped the shirt on the floor before unfastening and removing his belt. Carter looked at the fasten of his pants, nearly waist-high in his uniform trousers, then at his hip, and then back all over again before popping the button to take them off. The pants landed in the heap of shimmery grey clothing and Carter stuck a thumb under the side of his boxers.

“I hope you can keep those on,” Nathan said. At some point, he’d turned to lean against his desk.

Carter gave him a strange look, then said, “Yeah, I just have to pull them down a little.”

As he did so, Nathan realized that he’d been standing there, staring, and watching Carter undress. 

When Carter turned so that his hip was facing Nathan and tugged his shirt up a little, he said, “Yeah,” agreeing with something Nathan hadn’t actually expressed, “it’s not a pretty one.”

It really wasn’t, though Nathan wasn’t sure he would have used the word “pretty” in that sentence. The mark on Carter’s hip was a tangle of discordant lines and curves that never really settled into a pattern. Most marks had some method to their madness: a study had been done, years ago, that proved that each mark could be broken down into precise fractals.

Nathan had tried once; the key had fed him gibberish.

He had a feeling that Carter’s would be the same. The mark was identical, down to the smallest out of sync half-curve at the center. Nathan knew he was staring, but gave himself this one. It was a staring sort of moment. What Nathan said was, “Dammit.”

Carter was giving him the same strange look he had been the last time he’d caught Nathan staring, only dialed up a few notches. “Stark,” he said. His voice was both a warning and a question.

Nathan considered, for a moment, just finishing the patch and being done with it. It wouldn’t be complicated and Nathan was an A+ student in the school of shoving down things that he didn’t want to think about. But it was only a moment, and not a long one. The part of Nathan that had tried to do the math and then covered his mark so that he could be the one to know _first_ was the part that won out. That part had always wanted this moment, no matter how insane it turned out to be.

“Nathan,” Carter said. His voice was louder and the warning was beating out the question in his tone.

“You didn’t actually make Allison uncomfortable,” Nathan said. He turned so that he was more fully leaning against his desk, but kept eye contact with Carter. He winced when he realized what he’d said. “Well, you _did_ , but that wasn’t the point.”

“Then what _was_ the point, Stark?” Carter asked. He let his shirt fall back down across the top of his mark and crossed his arms. 

“She thought you were my soulmate,” Nathan said. 

Carter’s eyebrows shot up and he uncrossed his arms. He looked ridiculous, standing only a few feet from Nathan with his shocked expression, open posture, and lack of clothing. “Am I?” he asked. The shock slid off Carter’s face and was replaced by a curiously blank expression.

Nathan hadn’t thought Carter knew how to keep his emotions off his face; he’d seen no prior evidence to support it. He’d been wrong. Without that hint, Nathan was working entirely on faith. “Yes,” Nathan said. He kept his voice stronger than a whisper through will alone. Nathan and faith had never been on good footing with one another.

“I’m going to need you to prove that,” Carter said. His face was still unreadable, but his voice had gotten deeper. Part of Nathan thought that Carter was less trying to keep his emotions to himself, than he was trying to keep himself in control of those emotions.

For some reason, this wasn’t something Nathan had predicted. Of course Carter wouldn’t simply believe him. Carter had the same feelings about their relationship as Nathan did. He hadn’t had most of a day to try to wrap his mind around it, and he wasn’t getting the revelation from a comforting source. Nathan hadn’t had his jacket on since he’d sat down to do paperwork, so it was simple to just unbutton his shirt and slip off his undershirt. He made the awkward stretch to pull the adhesive patch from his shoulder, then set the intact patch down on the desk. Turning around meant he couldn’t see Carter’s reaction, which was a relief in more ways than it wasn’t.

Carter was quiet longer than Nathan had expected him to be. Nathan could hear him breathe evenly in and out, but nothing else. 

The silence made Nathan nervous in a way he couldn’t define. Maybe it was just Carter seeing his mark, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like he’d bared his throat to a predator that wasn’t ever going to threaten him, and really didn’t even need that submission. It made his shoulders tense and his palms warm where they were pressed almost comically straight against his legs.

When Carter spoke, his voice was as even as his breathing. “When did you find out?”

“Lunch,” Nathan said. He closed his eyes for a moment before he turned around, then resisted the urge to cross his arms.

“Huh,” Carter said. His face wasn’t so firmly held anymore, but Nathan didn’t recognize the expression he was wearing. Carter’s eyes were tight at the edges, but his eyebrows weren’t furrowed and he wasn’t frowning. He seemed to make a decision, then asked, “Are you fucking with me?”

Nathan startled. “What?” he barked. He knew he sounded more angry than confused, but he couldn’t make himself regret it. “Carter, if I wanted to fuck with you, removing my clothing would not have been part of the plan, nor would drawing on myself.”

“Fine,” Carter agreed. He took a breath, then let it out. “Last I checked, you didn’t like me very much.” He nodded. “And that’s fair. So what do you think about this?” He waved a hand up and down even as he emphasized the word “this,” like maybe Nathan wouldn’t understand.

He definitely understood. “I don’t know,” Nathan said.

Carter scoffed. “You? Not have an opinion? I don’t believe that for a second. If there’s a time for being painfully honest, I’m pretty sure this is it,” he said.

Nathan stared for a moment, then said, “Half of me wants to go home, have a drink, and pretend none of this ever happened. The other half is stuck on figuring out why it did.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Your turn.”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “Mostly, I’m really, really confused.” He shrugged. “I get it, I just don’t _get it_. You know?” He didn’t wait for Nathan to respond before continuing, “But I also feel kind of excited. How many people actually meet their soulmates? It’s not something to drop just because it’s awkward.”

“Thirty percent,” Nathan said automatically. “Thirty percent of people meet their soulmates.”

“I wasn’t actually asking,” said Carter. He was giving Nathan an amused look that Nathan wasn’t sure what to do with.

“I know,” he agreed. Another thing he hadn’t considered was the idea that Carter wasn’t against it. He had expected Carter to see it, acknowledge it, and then nothing. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have. Carter was fundamentally good in a way that most people weren’t. He should have examined the possibility that his soulmate wouldn’t say no out of hand. Nathan hadn’t said no out of hand; why would Carter?

“Whatever you’re thinking about, stop,” Carter said. “The universe isn’t going to explain itself any time soon, and definitely not to either of us. Drop the big picture and look at the little one.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “And you’re the expert?” he asked.

“No,” Carter said, waving his hand again. “But standing here staring isn’t helping anything. What do you want to actually do?”

And that was Carter: action over analysis. In general, Nathan disapproved of that methodology. At the moment, it was more appealing than anything else on the table. “I’m not sure,” Nathan said. “Let’s start with whether or not you actually hate me.” He knew his voice was dry and that he was using his business tone, but he was shirtless and discussing soulbonds with a man he’d never managed to have a casual conversation with. Some defensiveness seemed all right, considering.

Carter startled Nathan by laughing. He put his hands on his hips as the laughter leaned him forward a bit, and left them when he straightened up. “No,” he answered. “Find you condescending and irritating, though? Sometimes. And me?”

“No,” Nathan said. “I do still think you can be annoyingly idiotic, but that’s true of everyone.” He shrugged. “I enjoy pushing your buttons.” Nathan wanted to put his shirt back on, but as Carter seemed to have completely forgotten he was wearing only a light t-shirt and boxers, Nathan’s competitive nature wouldn’t let him. He moved from where he was standing, almost in the middle of the room, and sat against his desk, crossing his legs at the ankle and his arms against his chest. Closing himself off was the only concession his ego was willing to make.

“So you admit you do it consciously.” Carter smiled crookedly.

“Most of the time,” Nathan agreed.

“The more awkward question,” Carter started. He spoke over Nathan’s “ _more_ awkward” easily, and continued, “The more awkward question is if you’re attracted to me, or could be.”

Nathan dropped more weight onto the desk behind him. “You’re right. That’s more awkward.”

“Yeah,” Carter agreed. “Still needs to be answered.”

“I will admit,” Nathan started, then paused. His arms tightened, but his words were slow; he’d managed to take back control over what came out of his mouth somewhere around when Carter had started laughing. “I will admit that while I prefer women, I’ve had not unsatisfying relationships with men, as well.”

“So you’re bi,” Carter summarized. “That’s convenient. I messed around for a while after high school, but never anything serious.” He frowned. “So I guess I’m bi? At least a little?”

“Someday, someone will explain the Kinsey scale to you,” Nathan drawled. 

“Sure,” Carter said. “So theoretically, attraction could be there. How about not-theoretically?”

“I’m sure I’ve had a more painful conversation than this,” Nathan said, uncrossing and recrossing his arms, switching their positions, “but I can’t remember what it might have been.” He took a moment to stare at a chair against the far wall. It was an ugly red thing Allison had thought would add color to his office. He was waiting a polite amount of time before he incinerated it. As mental distractions went, however, it was perfect. He looked back up into Carter’s eyes, wrinkled at the edges, trying, and failing, to conceal amusement.

“Fine,” Carter said, his expression unchanging. “I think you’re very attractive, when you’re not being condescending or making political decisions instead of good ones.”

Nathan consciously skipped over his surprise, as it hadn’t helped him out at all yet, and settled on acceptance. “Right,” he said. “You’re not my type, but I wouldn’t throw you out of bed.” He could have explained why, but he would have had to take a least three shots of tequila first. Maybe another time.

“Thanks,” Carter said, his voice all sarcasm, but with the edge of amusement still there. “Good. So there aren’t any unbeatable odds against it.”

Nathan couldn’t help it. He added, “This is Eureka. When have unbeatable odds ever actually beaten us?”

Carter shrugged, but continued, “I don’t see why we shouldn’t give it a try.”

“Give it a try?” Nathan repeated. He stared at Carter, but it didn’t seem to be making him say any different. “We just give it a try,” he said again.

Carter’s amusement faded and morphed into an almost imperceptible disappointment as the wrinkles around his eyes disappeared and others, between his brows, took their place. “You said thirty percent of people ever meet their soulmate. We’ve met. We live four miles apart. If we don’t give it a try, it feels like we’d be laughing in the faces of everyone we know who falls into that other seventy percent.”

Nathan kept himself from letting out a likely hysterical laugh by biting his lip. No, it wasn’t implausible, and it wasn’t a stretch. Helpfully, it was then that he remembered. “The marks,” he said. “You can test the connection by touching your soulmate’s mark. People have theorized that it’s for marks that are incredibly similar, so no one makes a decision too quickly.”

Carter raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.” He paused. “I don’t actually know more about the soul marks than that they exist. No one in my family has ever matched one, and neither has anyone I know well.”

“It’s a test we can do,” Nathan said. “Take some of the guesswork out of it.”

“We know how much Nathan Stark loves guesswork,” Carter said, but his voice wasn’t mocking. If Nathan had to call it, he’d say Carter was actually teasing him.

It was strange. Nathan shrugged. “I don’t like unknowns.”

“I know,” Carter agreed. A little bit of a grin slid his mouth a bit wider. “So let’s try. What do we do?”

“All that has to happen is for one match to touch the other’s mark, and then the other does the same,” Nathan said.

“All right,” Carter said. He pulled his shirt up on the side, then pushed his boxers down a little from where they’d ridden up to cover the mark. “Give it a shot.” He looked Nathan in the eye as he said it, his grin wider in challenge.

It was a moment before Nathan was able to move forward. He had to step further into Carter’s space than he had ever done voluntarily before, and he had to take a step to do it. Nathan used his hands to push himself off his desk and used the awkward bit of movement to take a deep breath. Touching Carter wasn’t as unthinkable as he’d always assumed it would be, when he had let himself consider it.

As Nathan stopped his full-body momentum and reached forward, Carter asked, “What’s supposed to happen?”

Nathan paused for a second and looked up to Carter’s eyes, away from the mark he’d been blatantly staring at. “Like the best you’ve ever felt, whatever that means. You’ll feel it, when I touch you, and I’ll feel it when you touch me. It’s only mutual once the bond has been sealed.” He didn’t wait for Carter to respond, that time. Nathan stretched his hand the couple extra inches he needed to touch Carter’s mark. He slid his fingers along the mark from the front of Carter’s hip bone to the back, then rested his palm over the mark. It felt colder than he’d thought it would. It was easily colder than the rest of Carter’s skin, and almost icy compared to Carter’s body heat, which Nathan could feel like a blanket anywhere he had crossed the previously static line of impropriety. He didn’t notice Carter react until his hand came up to grasp Nathan’s forearm.

Nathan looked back up in time to see Carter shut his eyes and breathe out, “Oh, shit.” When Carter’s grip on his arm tightened, Nathan removed his hand and took a step back. Carter didn’t let go, but he loosened his fingers.

After a moment just watching Carter slow his breathing, knowing he was staring again, Nathan asked, “So?” 

Carter took a few more deep breaths before he said, “I think that’s probably what’s supposed to happen, yeah.” He wasn’t quite meeting Nathan’s eyes as he said it.

“What did you feel?” Nathan was watching Carter’s face closely, even without the eye contact: his pupils were blown and the beginning of a blush had spread out from the bridge of his nose.

“I have no idea,” Carter answered. He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know if I could explain it.” His pupils grew only marginally smaller as his breath evened out and he looked up to meet Nathan’s eyes. “Turn around.”

Nathan did, breaking Carter’s hold on his arm. It felt the same as the last time he’d done it: the inability to see Carter’s face made him tense all across his back and his palms grew warm. Somehow, this time was even worse, with Nathan’s mental picture of Carter’s eyes on his skin making him feel exposed in a way that just taking his shirt off hadn’t.

“Okay,” Carter said, and that was the warning Nathan got before his fingers, then hand, slid over the mark on Nathan’s back.

After a moment, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to describe it, either. It felt like two things were happening at once, and both of them had all of him. The first felt a little like static electricity, burning just this side of too sharp. It radiated out from the mark until it felt like his body was vibrating. At the same time, it felt like acceptance, if acceptance had been a physical sensation. Everything stilled and his muscles relaxed, again flowing out from the mark. It felt like he had nowhere he needed to be, and all the time in the world to savor the downtime. 

He heard himself make a sound, but what it had been escaped him. He was relaxed to his bones with none of the usual anxiety that pushed him for better and more. It felt like he’d accomplished the better and more and that now was the time to go home and feel accomplished. The deep calm, combined with the vibration at the top of his skin, felt like excitement and accomplishment, all at once. It felt like he could do anything he wanted, but that he didn’t _have_ to do any of it. 

The sensations receded slowly has he felt Carter move his hand off Nathan’s back. When he could tell what was happening around him again, he was breathing heavily and had both his hands flat against his desk, holding him up, at least two feet from where he’d been standing before.

From behind him, Carter asked, “Yeah?”

Nathan straightened and turned around, breathing deeply. “That’s definitely what it’s supposed to do,” he said, feeling his muscles loosening.

“Yeah,” Carter said again, meeting Nathan’s eyes.

Nathan let himself look Carter up and down again, not worrying about staring. Carter seemed to be doing the same once Nathan broke eye contact, anyway. His eyes caught on things he hadn’t noticed, or at least consciously noticed, before. There was a scar just below Carter’s navel, healed mostly into a silver slice of skin. It was small, but it had been deep. Even standing still, Carter had a sort of energy to him, like he was relaxed but still ready to move. That readiness didn’t seem to detract from his relaxation. For a moment, Nathan wondered if that was what the static he’d felt was. Comfortable, but with action just beneath the surface.

When Carter broke the silence, it was with, “What did you mean about sealing the bond?”

“The bond is potential energy,” Nathan answered, forcing his attention back to Carter’s face. He was standing significantly closer than necessary, but it didn’t feel strange. It was alarming, really, how strange it didn’t feel. “It just sits there, existing, until it’s matched with the same energy. Once it’s matched, it can’t be unmatched. Sealing the bond connects soulmates permanently and gives them the little bit of extra awareness romances always try to sell as a mystical connection. After the bond is sealed, it can’t be broken. That little piece of extra awareness is always there, regardless of distance or other feelings. It’s why when one soulmate dies, the other often speaks about an empty space, or an echo. Where that extra awareness would be, it’s empty.” Nathan shrugged. “There’s very little science behind any of that, but it’s time-tested and appears to be universal.”

“Okay,” Carter said. He shrugged, but didn’t seem to be disagreeing with Nathan’s assessment. “What seals the bond?”

“No one knows,” Nathan said. “It goes from potential energy to a seal is all anyone knows. There’s no fixed timeline, no action, no ceremony that does it. One minute it’s potential energy, and the next it’s sealed.”

“So you can’t prevent it,” Carter said. It wasn’t really a question, but Nathan answered anyway.

“Not as far as anything I’ve read says,” Nathan agreed.

“Huh,” Carter said. He looked at Nathan for another moment, eyes narrowing slightly, before he said, “Don’t punch me.”

Nathan got so far as “What?” before Carter wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him into a kiss. Carter’s other hand reached up to grasp the front of Nathan’s shoulder. It helped steady the height difference. Nathan spent another few seconds being surprised before he opened his mouth and kissed back.

The kiss was thorough, but polite. Carter made no move to push the kiss any farther along and Nathan kept his hands on Carter’s waist. As far as kisses went, it was easily in Nathan’s top ten. It was comfortable and had gone from exploratory to learned in seconds. 

When Carter broke the kiss, Nathan was out of breath. 

“So,” Carter said, his voice deeper than Nathan had heard before. He seemed to be struggling to catch his breath at least as much as Nathan was. 

“So,” Nathan echoed. He made no effort to step out of Carter space, or to remove his hands, even though at some point, they’d turned so that Carter was leaning against Nathan’s desk and Nathan’s body was between Carter and any attempt to leave.

Carter gave Nathan a crooked smile. “Give it a try?”

He didn’t even think about it. “We can do that,” Nathan said.

“Good,” Carter said. He slid his arms down to Nathan’s chest and pushed slightly. “That’s decided.” When Nathan had let go and stepped back, Carter slid out from between him and the desk and headed for his clothes. “Now I really want to go home and take a shower,” he said.

Nathan didn’t say anything, just watched Carter get dressed. At some point, all of his objections, as well as his good sense, had deserted him. Nathan couldn’t think of any real reason why this was anything but a good, logical idea. It took until Carter was dressed and almost out the door before Nathan thought of one. “Carter,” he called.

Carter turned around and smiled. “You should probably try calling me Jack,” he said.

“Jack,” Nathan said, watching amusement wrinkle Carter’s, Jack’s, eyes. “This should probably stay between us.” He paused. “And Allison.”

Jack shrugged. “That doesn’t seem hard.” The smile on his face stayed firmly in place. “I don’t think ‘soulmates’ is the first thing that will cross anyone’s mind if they see us together,” Jack said. 

“Probably true,” Nathan agreed. 

Jack turned back around and headed for the door. After he was most of the way out of the room, Jack called back over his shoulder, “Goodnight, Nathan.”

After the door clicked shut, Nathan dropped his weight back against his desk. He wasn’t sure how the highlight of his day had gone from a long line of particularly dull meetings to the decision to date his previously unknown and, until recently, hardly civil soulmate. 

He wasn’t sure he regretted it, either. Maybe he’d come to his senses in the morning.

*

It was nearly a year later, to the day, that the bond sealed.

In that year, the town had found out they were together well before they were supposed to, Jack had managed to keep them from having sex for far longer than any man should, and Nathan had discovered that dating Jack was the easiest thing he’d ever done in his life.

None of those pivotal, life-changing moments had sealed their bond. Nathan had almost begun to think that it would never seal, when it did.

They were arguing when it happened, which really shouldn’t have surprised anyone.

*

“Dammit, Jack!” Nathan said, slamming a hand down onto the counter next to him. SARAH kindly refrained from commenting. “What were you thinking? Were you even thinking at all?” His voice was louder than normal, but it wasn’t a yell. 

“I was thinking,” Jack replied, taking a drink from the glass of beer SARAH had poured him, “that if I didn’t do it, someone else would have to, and it’s my job to keep that from happening.” He looked a little ridiculous, standing at the kitchen island, casually drinking a beer in his soot-covered and mostly destroyed uniform, with a cut near his hairline still fresh.

“Did you wait for backup? Call for anyone to analyze it?”

“No,” Jack said. “No, because when you’ve got explosives ticking down in front of you, you have two choices. Make a decision and possibly die, or sit back and definitely die.” He stepped into Nathan’s space, making Nathan step so that his back was firmly against the counter. “I had ten seconds, Nathan. Who could I have called in ten seconds?”

Nathan swallowed his immediate response and instead slid an arm around Jack’s waist, pulling them flush. He braced his other arm against the counter, grounding himself. He knew there wasn’t a rational response to Jack’s question. He even knew that his anger was irrational. Nathan had always turned fear into anger, and Jack knew that, now.

Jack slipped his arms around Nathan’s back and pulled him into a hug. Jack’s heartbeat against Nathan’s was a calming counterpoint and Nathan took a deep breath.

“I hate your job,” he said into Jack’s hair. He could feel Jack laughing against his chest and pulled Jack tighter against him. Jack didn’t stop laughing, but he didn’t say anything, either. Nathan took another deep breath, then slouched a little so that he and Jack were face to face. “Remind me to fire you.”

He watched Jack’s smile widen as Jack huffed another laugh. “I think I’m employed by the DOD, actually,” Jack said with affectionate sarcasm, the same way he always said it when Nathan offered to fire him.

Nathan pressed a kiss against Jack’s mouth, then broke it quickly. “You’re an ass,” he said.

“Mm,” Jack responded. “You love me anyway.”

“God only knows why,” Nathan said. He pressed himself up against Jack, both for the fun of it and to get Jack to back up. Really, it was even odds as to whether Jack would actually back up or just start unbuttoning Nathan’s pants. Arguments had a funny way of turning into sex, once they’d admitted what they were really fighting about. Jack objected to Nathan doing things that he found immoral just for business or science, and Nathan objected to the sheer number of times a week Jack was either almost killed or injured.

This time, Jack stepped back. He hooked his fingers into the loops of Nathan’s dress pants and tugged Nathan back along with him. “I’m sorry my job is dangerous,” Jack said. “I’m not sorry that I do it.”

Nathan sighed, then moved to kiss Jack again. They had long since agreed to disagree, but it wasn’t often that they actually managed. “I know,” Nathan said. He kissed his way down the side of Jack’s face then leaned back to look him in the eye. Nathan was still angry, but arguing wasn’t worth the energy. Sex, on the other hand. Sex with Jack was fantastic. The first time, Nathan had honestly spent the two hours after trying to figure out just what had made it so good. 

The answer had been Jack. “You’re imagining fucking me right now, aren’t you?” Jack asked, pulling Nathan back into the present.

“I am,” Nathan agreed. “If I’m fucking you, you’re not off trying to get yourself killed.” The smile on Jack’s face was cheek-splitting; Nathan loved it. 

“So this is an intervention,” Jack said, his voice mock serious in all the ways his face wasn’t.

“Absolutely,” Nathan said. He deadpanned, “You’ve caught on to my nefarious plot.”

“Sign me up.” Jack reached up to pull Nathan down into a kiss, then froze. 

Nathan had a moment to wonder why before the world got _bigger_. He was Nathan, but he was also more-than-Nathan. The anger was still there, and the love, and the lust, and the worry, but something like guilt was there, too. Alongside the guilt were love and anticipation, with a little bit of pain. That was Jack. He was still Nathan, but a little piece of Jack had moved in like a noisy neighbor.

“Nathan,” Jack said, gripping the back of Nathan’s neck more strongly.

“That’s you,” Nathan said. He ran his hands over Jack’s hair and down his body to his waist. Nathan clasped a hand where he knew Jack’s mark was, below a few layers of clothing.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “And you.”

“The bond sealed.” Nathan continued to go over the new emotions he felt, watching Jack do the same, unwilling to let go of Jack’s waist, until, “You’re in pain.” He’d said the words before he realized it was something that should concern him. It had just been another feeling, knowledge.

“A little,” Jack answered. “Got knocked into a tree.”

Nathan took a breath, then said, “Jesus.”

“You weren’t supposed to know,” Jack admitted. “Doesn’t seem like that’s going to work anymore.”

“No,” Nathan agreed.

“Nathan,” said Jack.

“Yeah,” Nathan agreed again.

“This is incredible.” Jack tightened his grip further on Nathan’s neck and Nathan knew he was going to bruise. “You really need to fuck me now.”

Nathan couldn’t do anything but agree.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. If I ever manage to not suck at it, this will have a porn epilogue. (This has a likelihood of about 15%. Maybe 17.) Also reading the fic has made Sku consider a porn epilogue, so, there's that.
> 
> P.P.S. The really long fic is also yours once I manage to finish it. It obviously won't be anon by then, but: hey, free fic!


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